Trout Eyes: True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fly Fishing
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About this ebook
Trout Eyes is a love letter to the fish we pursue and insects they eat and the waters in which they live.
Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
William G. Tapply
William G. Tapply was a professor of English at Clark University. The author of twenty-one Brady Coyne novels and ten books about fly-fishing and the outdoors, he was also a columnist for American Angler magazine and a contributing editor for several other outdoors publications. He lived with his wife, novelist Vicki Stiefel, in Hancock, New Hampshire.
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Trout Eyes - William G. Tapply
PART I
Brookies, Browns, and Bows
Trout are quite unaware of their exalted status.
—Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman
A trout river is like a book: some parts are dull and some are lively.
—H.G. Tapply, The Sportsman’s Notebook
Brook trout are generally considered to be far stupider than brown trout. On the other hand, brook-trout fishermen are probably no more stupid than brown-trout fishermen.
—Ed Zern, How to Catch Fishermen
1
Virtual Angling
Iwas leaning my elbows on the bridge rail watching the water glide under me and spread into a wide slow pool. It was that dusky time of day halfway between afternoon and night when summer trout streams begin to rouse themselves. I was late for supper, but I was married to a fly fisher and would be forgiven.
The low-angled sun slanted through the overhanging willows spreading a mottled patchwork of shadow and light upon the water. Some undulating pale mayfly spinners were dapping their abdomens on the surface, and now and then a few smaller, darker mayflies came drifting along—either the leftovers from a mid-day hatch or the heralds of an evening event to come.
Some cumbersome craneflies and neon damsels and fluttery caddisflies were flapping around the streamside shrubbery. Swallows and waxwings were swooping over the water. Soon the bats would come out to play.
Directly below me, in a patch of sunlight in the cushion behind the middle bridge abutment, a brown trout was finning just under the surface. I guessed he’d go fourteen or fifteen inches, a really nice fish for this particular New Hampshire stream. Periodically he’d sidle into the current seam. His dorsal fin would break the surface, his head would twist to the side, and his mouth would wink white, and then he’d ease back into his cushion. Eating emergers, I guessed.
Three other fish were lined up along the bank downstream from a sweeper on the deep left side of the pool. They were barely dimpling the surface—the kind of riseforms that sometimes betray really big fish, but could just as easily be made by two-inch chubs. I guessed—or preferred to believe—that these were trout. Sipping spinners, I figured, though it might’ve been ants or midges. I’d try a spinner first.
Down where the water quickened near the tailout two or three smallish fish kept splashing. A high-floating caddis skittered over them would do the job.
But my attention was focused on that nice brown behind the abutment. He’d be the trickiest one to catch, and he was therefore the most interesting. He was coming up regularly—about once a minute. A serious feeder. Assuming I figured out what he was eating and found a good imitation in my flybox, I’d need to cast it way up under the bridge to get a drift along that current seam, and to do that I’d have to wade nearly to the middle of the pool, where, I happened to know, the water would be lapping the tops of my waders. But unless I was standing in the right place, a braid of current at the bottom of the trout’s cushion would grab my leader and drag my fly away from his feeding lane.
Even from the middle of the stream, the only way to beat the drag would be with a puddle cast. I’d have to tie on an extra-long tippet, drive it up under the arch of the bridge on a tight loop, and stop it abruptly. If I did it right, the tippet would land in loose coils and the fly would drift draglessly right along that trout’s feeding lane, and if I’d tied on the right pattern, and if I’d timed it right, the fish would slide out of his cushion and drift back under my fly, and I’d see his back arch and then the swirl as he took it and twisted away, and I’d raise my rod tip and feel the fish’s strength and energy surge up the line and through the rod to my hand.
Hey, mister. Lookit that. There’s a big fish down there. See it?
I nearly jumped off the bridge. You shouldn’t sneak up on a fellow like that,
I said.
He was a kid, twelve or thirteen years old, I guessed. He’d leaned his bike against the bridge and was now standing beside me, up on tiptoes, elbows on the rail, squinting down at the water.
Of course I see the fish,
I added.
I wasn’t sneaking,
he said. You just weren’t paying attention. I think I coulda exploded a bomb under you and you wouldn’ta noticed. You were like totally in a daze or something.
* * *
My father took me with him from the beginning. When we went fishing, I was his partner, not his kid. I took my equal turn rowing the boat, paddling the canoe, or running the outboard motor, just as I tied my own clinch knots, baited my own hooks, and unsnarled my own backlashes.
Eventually I figured out that Dad had important life-lessons in mind, but at the time I understood that taking turns was simple and obvious fairness: Everybody, even fathers, would rather fish than paddle. It never occurred to me that some parents would let the kid do all the fishing, any more than I could imagine a father never bringing his kid fishing with him.
When I got older, my father abandoned his equal-time-with-the-paddle policy. Just grab the rod, get up there in the bow, and don’t argue about it,
he’d say when we launched our canoe.
We should flip for it,
I’d say.
I told you, don’t argue. You’re supposed to honor your father.
We’ll swap ends later, then.
We’ll see.
As often as not when I figured it should be his turn and suggested it was time for him to fish and me to paddle, he’d say, Nah. You go ahead. I’m having fun.
After a while, I came to realize that he really was having fun. He liked maneuvering the canoe to give me an easy cast at a good-looking spot along the bank of a bass pond or a current seam on a trout river. He got a kick out of it when his guiding efforts paid off in a fish.
It’s just as much fun as fishing,
he claimed. "It doesn’t matter which of us happens to be holding the rod. Either way, I feel like an equal participant. It’s not me or you casting the fly and hooking the fish. It’s us."
Fishing in your imagination,
I said. Virtual angling.
Well, sure,
he said. "Once you’ve packed away some experiences, it doesn’t take much to roll out the mental home movies and to spark the muscle memories. When I see you holding a bending rod, I can feel it. When I watch you cast, the part of my brain that guides my casting arm is doing it along with you."
When he became too infirm to go fishing, my father insisted that I narrate detailed reports of all my angling adventures, great and small. He liked to hear about a summer evening on my local bluegill pond just as much as a week on an Alaskan salmon river. He’d close his eyes when I talked, and if I skimmed over some detail, he’d interrupt me. He wanted to know how the river smelled, how the breeze riffled the water, how the trout sipped the mayfly spinners, how the mist rose off the stream.
And if I did it right, I could tell that he was feeling and smelling and hearing and seeing it all for himself.
I used to think my father was odd. Who else would truly enjoy watching somebody else fish as much as he enjoyed fishing himself? How could a man who knew he’d never go fishing again genuinely love hearing other people’s stories the way Dad did?
Well, we’re all virtual anglers. We daydream of fish and rivers and hatches when we tie flies, when we take showers, when we drive automobiles. We join clubs and watch videos and attend shows. We devour catalogs and pamphlets. We hang around fly shops. We buy lots of stuff. We read magazines.
I know for a fact that you read books about fishing.
* * *
In the last months of his life, when I visited him, I usually found my father lying in his sickbed with his eyes closed and a little smile on his face. I’d sit beside him, poke his shoulder, and say, Hey. You awake?
His eyes would blink open. I was fishing,
he’d say.
* * *
As the kid and I watched from the bridge, that nice brown trout eased into the current seam, drifted backward, humped his back, twisted his head, and ate something.
See that?
the kid said. Too bad you don’t have a pole with you.
I’ve got a rod in my car,
I said. I don’t go anywhere without my gear.
So whyn’t you go catch that fish, then?
I tapped my temple and smiled. Because I already did.
He narrowed his eyes at me. Huh?
Virtual angling,
I said.
2
Trickle Treat
After living most of my life within earshot of highway racket where city lights blotted the stars from the night sky, I finally did it. I bought a little farm on a dirt road in the New Hampshire hills. My new hometown has a post office, a cash market, a library, and an inn that has sheltered wayfarers since 1789. There’s a sheep farm and an apple orchard and a couple of cornfields. That’s about it for commerce.
Our town dump is officially called The Dump.
It’s that kind of a town.
My neighbors own fly rods and shotguns and canoes. They raise goats and pigs and chickens. They park backhoes and tractors and pickup trucks in their barns. They read books and debate foreign policy and drive long distances for good theater and first-run movies and veal piccata, too, and they send their kids to college.
That kind of town.
In my new town, stone walls line every roadside. Old cellarholes are scattered through the woods. From my windows I can watch whitetail deer, wild turkeys, ruffed grouse, red foxes, black bears, and packs of coyotes hunt and browse in my fields. Barred owls and sharpshin hawks sometimes come swooping down to chase the chickadees from my feeders.
It’s that kind of town.
In my town, there are twice as many miles of dirt roads as paved. It’s mostly forest and meadow and mountain and swamp. Rocky streams bubble through every crease in the hillsides. Pristine ponds nestle in every depression.
You could spend a lifetime tramping all those woods, driving all those back roads, and casting flies upon all that water. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have a whole lifetime. But I’m giving it my best shot.
* * *
And so I was bumping down one of those nameless dirt roads on an August afternoon last summer, with my topo map on the seat beside me and my old seven-foot fiberglass fly rod in back, going slowly, exploring, getting the lay of the land.
At the bottom of the hill, a brook flowed under a wooden bridge. Naturally, I pulled over to take a look.
On the upstream side, the brook came curling out of the woods and wandered through some boggy marsh. It was barely a trickle. You could jump across it without a running start. It flowed slow and deep and shadowy against alder-lined banks. It reminded me of another trickle that haunted me when I was a kid, and haunts me still. That one was called Job’s Brook.
Fifty years ago, before the suburbs sprawled, native brook trout lived in Job’s Brook. It meandered through a big trackless bog two towns to the west of my hometown. Of all the places Dad and I fished when I was a boy, Job’s Brook was my favorite. We hit it two or three times a year, and not once did we encounter another fisherman, nor did we even see a footprint or a gum wrapper or a cigarette butt.
Mostly the brookies ran from five to seven inches long, but once I caught a ten-incher from Job’s Brook. It felt cold and muscular in my hand, and its spots glowed like drops of fresh blood. My father admired it, proclaimed it a trophy and a treasure, and told me to put it back.
Native brook trout, he made me understand, were rare and beautiful, and so were the waters where they lived. He didn’t use the word endangered,
but his meaning was clear and prophetic.
Today, Job’s Brook, the trout water of my childhood dreams, flows through a concrete trough behind a strip mall—reason enough to move to a farm on a dirt road.
In the summer months that I’d been exploring my new town, I’d cast flies upon all the water that I encountered. I caught bass from every pond—largemouths in the weedy ones and smallmouths in the rocky ones. Most of the rushing mountain streams were running low and warm, and I caught nothing from them. In a few, though, I’d found mixtures of browns, rainbows, and brookies that splashed happily at the foam beetles and bushy dry flies I floated over them. The browns and rainbows suggested that the brookies, too, were non-natives, but I was glad to find them, and I marked those little streams on my topo maps.
So I got out of my car, squatted beside this little nameless New Hampshire brook, and stuck my hand in the water. Almost instantly the chill ran up to my armpit and whispered, Spring seeps.
On the downstream side, the brook opened into a pool, if you could call it that, before it continued its aimless journey around the rim of a horse pasture marked by a curving row of alders and willows.
The pool was about the size of the office in my new house—ten feet across, maybe. A big pool, by small-brook standards. Quite possibly the widest, deepest hole along its entire length, unless there were beaver ponds.
Where the current pushed against the left-hand bank of this pool, it had dug an undercut that exposed the roots of the alders that shaded it. If any trout lived in this little trickle, the oldest and biggest of them would surely live right there.
I captured half a dozen grasshoppers from the weeds beside the road, knelt on the bank at the head of the pool, and dropped them in one by one. The first five kicked and wiggled their way along the current seam, disappeared in the deep shade of the overhanging alders, then reappeared, untouched, and continued downstream.
The sixth hopper disappeared in a little splash under the alders.
That was good enough for me. I looked up and down the dirt road, went back to my car, and grabbed my old fiberglass stick. It was already rigged with an elkhair caddis on a short leader. I knelt at the head of the pool and flicked a little roll cast onto the current seam. The fly bobbed along, entered the shade under the alders . . . and disappeared in a spurt of water.
I lifted my rod. And laughed. A tiny fish came skittering across the top of the pool.
I held it in my hand, all four inches of it. It was a miniature brookie, already beginning to show its spawning colors. A beautiful little trout.
It wasn’t a ten-incher. It was better than that—a truly wild brook trout, too small to have been stocked. It had been born in this water, and possibly it was a genuine native whose line of